Valtrus Innovations Ltd. et al. v. TierPoint, LLC

I'll research this case and its surrounding context before drafting.

Let me verify the patent itself and the docket specifics.

Let me pin down the lead case, the dismissal timing, and the campaign context.

Case Overview and Background

Parties. The plaintiffs are two related Irish entities. Valtrus Innovations Ltd. is a non-practicing patent-assertion vehicle that holds legal title to a portfolio it acquired from Hewlett Packard/HPE — Valtrus's managing director has testified (in a 2025 IPR declaration) that the portfolio, including patents such as U.S. 7,120,832, was acquired in May 2021 via recorded assignments from HP, and Valtrus identifies itself as an NPE asserting acquired patents (Stanford NPE Database lists the case as "Non Practicing Entity," one acquired patent). Key Patent Innovations Ltd. ("KPI") is Valtrus's Irish parent and the portfolio's beneficial owner: under a Declaration of Trust executed the same day Valtrus took title, KPI holds the enforcement, alienation, and monetization rights while Valtrus retains bare legal title. KPI is also the platform behind Malikie Innovations (the BlackBerry portfolio) and a third assertion entity; IAM and Unified Patents report the KPI group has filed dozens of cases (IAM: 87 across the three entities as of its reporting). KPI's Rule 7.1 disclosure in the companion DataBank case names New PP Licensing LLC as its corporate parent. Both Valtrus and KPI are named as plaintiffs here because of standing rulings in the parallel SAP and Google actions, where courts held Valtrus has Article III standing but lacks statutory standing under 35 U.S.C. § 281 because it did not retain "all substantial rights," making KPI a necessary plaintiff under Rule 19 (see the N.D. Cal. opinion in Valtrus Innovations Ltd. v. Google, No. 5:25-cv-07063, and the E.D. Tex. rulings in Valtrus v. SAP America, No. 2:24-cv-00021-JRG). The defendant, TierPoint, LLC, is a Delaware LLC headquartered in St. Louis that operates colocation, managed cloud, and disaster-recovery data centers nationally; TierPoint admitted it "maintains a data center in this District" and does business in Texas, but denied infringement. TierPoint is an end-user/operator defendant, not a manufacturer or a competitor of Valtrus.

Accused technology and asserted patents. Valtrus did not accuse a specific vendor product; it accused TierPoint's operation of the cooling/atmospheric-control systems inside its own data centers — "systems in its data centers for cooling, or otherwise controlling atmospheric conditions" — of direct infringement under § 271(a) (Compl. ¶¶ 29–51). TierPoint's interrogatory/initial disclosures summarize the asserted claims as claims 1–11 and 12–21 of the '277 patent, claims 10–13 and 16–17 of the '284 patent, claims 1–4 and 7–10 of the '682 patent, claims 10–13 and 15 of the '683 patent, claims 1–9 of the '287 patent, claims 1–6, 9–13 and 15 of the '179 patent, and claims 1–2 and 6–12 of the '870 patent (TierPoint Initial Disclosures, E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00776). Note that the case metadata for this matter lists only U.S. 6,718,277 as the patent at issue, whereas the complaint and contentions actually asserted a seven-patent family; the '277 patent is the lead/representative patent. The family is the HP Labs data-center thermal-management portfolio (inventors include Ratnesh Sharma and Abdlmonem H. Beitelmal, identified in TierPoint's disclosures). In one-line sketches: '277 (6,718,277, "Atmospheric control within a building") — sense conditions at discrete points, generate an "empirical atmospheric map," compare it to a "template" map, identify pattern differentials, and adjust cooling accordingly; '284 (6,854,284) — cool racks via a plenum with controllable returns responsive to rack/return temperatures; '682 (6,868,682) — hierarchical, agent-based control of data-center temperature from sensor data; '683 (6,868,683, "Cooling of data centers") — localized, dynamically controllable vents/returns matched to individual rack heat loads; '287 (6,854,287, "Cooling system") — heat-exchanger units near racks with variable fan speed and cooling-fluid temperature; '179 (6,862,179, "Partition for varying the supply of cooling fluid") — controllable plenum partitions creating zones with variable cooling supply; '870 (7,031,870, "Data center evaluation using an air re-circulation index") — evaluate cooling performance via an air re-circulation/supply-heat index. Valtrus's claim charts in the sibling cases point to third-party cooling technology (e.g., Vertiv Liebert iCOM/iCOM-S controls, Vigilent AI-based airflow optimization), consistent with a customer/end-user theory.

Posture, venue, and why it matters. Filed September 25, 2024 in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas before Judge Rodney Gilstrap, the case was docketed as a member case under Lead Case No. 2:24-cv-00777-JRG (Valtrus v. DataBank Holdings) — Gilstrap's consolidation structure for Valtrus's simultaneous September 2024 complaints against multiple data-center operators. TierPoint answered and amended its answer (ECF No. 17), asserting invalidity, non-infringement, prosecution history estoppel, license/exhaustion, and § 286 damages limitations, plus declaratory-judgment counterclaims; the parties exchanged infringement contentions and initial disclosures and litigated venue/damages issues before Valtrus and TierPoint jointly moved to dismiss this defendant without prejudice (Dkt. 62), which Judge Gilstrap granted — dismissing all claims and counterclaims without prejudice, each side bearing its own costs, closing the member case, and expressly keeping the DataBank lead case open. Venue mattered here for the usual reasons: Marshall/Gilstrap was the district's preferred patent forum for NPEs (speed, experience, favorable local rules), and TierPoint's DFW-area data center supplied the "regular and established place of business" hook, although the case never reached claim construction or trial. The case is notable less for its own outcome than as a data point in four larger stories: (1) the Valtrus/KPI HPE data-center assertion wave, which targeted data-center operators rather than equipment makers — a customer-suit strategy that pulled suppliers into the fight (Vertiv filed a declaratory-judgment action and intervened in the Digital Realty and NTT Data/CyrusOne member cases, invoking indemnity obligations and describing Valtrus's "campaign of threats against many additional Vertiv customers"); (2) the standing/ownership controversy over the Valtrus–KPI Declaration of Trust, which is the campaign's systemic vulnerability and explains why KPI is a co-plaintiff in this case; (3) IPR/PTAB linkage — the same family is under attack at the Board (e.g., IPR2025-00667 on the '287 patent, IPR2025-01490 on Valtrus's '832 patent) and by Unified Patents through reexamination and PATROLL prior-art contests; and (4) market context — these HP patents issued 2004–2006 and are at or near the end of their terms, making past damages (and § 286's six-year lookback) the central economic issue, while the accused functionality at modern AI-optimized data centers looks far removed from the 2002-era disclosure. TierPoint and Valtrus were also later in litigation over different Valtrus data-center patents in 2:25-cv-00323-JRG, which was dismissed with prejudice in 2026 per PACER-derived reporting — suggesting a broader global resolution, though the terms are not public.

Sourcing caveats. Party roles, standing rulings, and the KPI trust structure are supported by primary sources (PTAB petition exhibits at ptacts.uspto.gov, the N.D. Cal. opinion at govinfo.gov, E.D. Tex. filings). The '277 specification and claim sketches are from the patent itself (Google Patents/USPTO). The dismissal order language and the asserted seven-patent/claim-set list are confirmed by the joint dismissal order text and TierPoint's initial disclosures. Not independently verified in this session: the exact date of Judge Gilstrap's dismissal order (the joint motion is Dkt. 62), whether a license/tolling agreement accompanied the dismissal, the content of TierPoint's specific claim charts, the identity of the petitioner(s) in the related IPRs, and the terms of the 2:25-cv-00323 dismissal — some of these come from AI-generated litigation aggregators (PatSnap/exparte) rather than PACER directly and should be re-verified before being relied on.

I'll research the docket chronology, ruling dates, and parallel PTAB activity on the '277 patent before drafting.

Now let me pin down the dismissal date, the second TierPoint case disposition, and PTAB activity on the '277 patent.

Let me find the '776 dismissal order date and any PTAB challenge to the '277 patent.

Key Legal Developments and Outcome

Below is the litigation chronology for Valtrus Innovations Ltd. et al. v. TierPoint, LLC, No. 2:24-cv-00776-JRG (E.D. Tex., Marshall Div.), with a companion note on the February 2025–November 2025 follow-on suit between the same parties.

Chronology at a glance

1. Filing and initial pleadings

Pre-suit notice. The complaint alleges Valtrus sent a Notice of Infringement letter on 2024-03-22 addressed to TierPoint's EVP/Chief Legal Officer and Secretary, Wendy Knudsen; it was delivered 2024-04-01, and TierPoint responded through counsel by letter dated 2024-03-27 (Compl. ¶¶ 20–21; verified in TierPoint's answer, which admits the March 22 and March 27 letters while denying that the letter supplied a "specific factual basis" for all allegations). This notice date matters because the complaint pleads willfulness only as to the '870 patent, tied to that letter (Compl. ¶¶ 50, 52), and because it sets up the § 286 damages horizon.

Complaint — 2024-09-25. Dkt. 1, a seven-patent, fourteen-exhibit complaint (seven patents + seven claim charts) with a jury demand, filed the same day the AO 120 form was transmitted to the PTO and the case was assigned to Judge Rodney Gilstrap. The single most important procedural fact is that the case was never a stand-alone action: it was filed as a member case in Gilstrap's consolidation structure under Lead Case No. 2:24-cv-00777-JRG. Justia's docket shows the opening entries (complaint, AO 120, assignment, magistrate-consent notice) all dated 2024-09-25.

TierPoint's answer and counterclaims. TierPoint answered and then amended (Amended Answer, ECF No. 17, per prior section). The answer admits TierPoint is a Delaware LLC with a St. Louis principal place of business, admits it "conducts business in the State of Texas and within this District," and admits it "maintains a data center in this District," while denying infringement of every patent (Answer ¶¶ 14–32). The counterclaims are a full set of declaratory-judgment counts of non-infringement and invalidity, pleaded patent-by-patent — e.g., for the '277 patent the answer pleads that "because Valtrus has asserted the '277 patent against TierPoint, declaratory relief is both appropriate and necessary to establish that the '277 patent is invalid," with the same paired non-infringement/invalidity counts for the '284, '682, '683, '287, '179, and '870 patents (Counterclaims ¶¶ 16–41; reproduced in PTAB petition exhibits). Affirmative defenses included invalidity, non-infringement, prosecution history estoppel, license/exhaustion, and § 286 damages limitations (per prior section, citing the amended answer).

Asserted claims. Plaintiffs' contentions and TierPoint's initial disclosures identify an eight-claim-set assertion across the family, with the '277 patent asserted at claims 1–11 and 12–21 (i.e., both the method and system claims) — Plaintiffs' Disclosure of Asserted Claims and Infringement Contentions, dated 2025-02-11, signed for Valtrus and KPI (exhibit to IPR2025-00667 petition, ptacts.uspto.gov). Note again the metadata conflict already flagged in the case summary: the case-level "patents at issue" field lists only '277, while the pleadings and contentions asserted seven patents.

2. Pre-trial motions of substance

Motions to dismiss / transfer. There was no Rule 12 motion practice in this member case in the retrieved record. The campaign-level transfer fight happened elsewhere: the Federal Circuit denied a mandamus petition on 2025-04-11 seeking to compel Judge Gilstrap to move a KPI/Valtrus case out of the Marshall Division into the Sherman Division (with a request for random reassignment "to discourage gamesmanship" and "judge-shopping"); the panel faulted aspects of the district court's analysis but found the denial not "patently erroneous" (RPX, 2025-04-11). Separately, a USCA notice of docketing of a mandamus petition appears in the campaign's SAP member case on 2025-02-04. The only substantive jurisdictional/standing fight of the kind that defines this campaign — Valtrus's Article III/§ 281 standing and the necessity of joining KPI — was litigated in the SAP, Google, and NTT Data/CyrusOne tracks, not in the TierPoint member case (see prior section's standing discussion; no re-derivation here).

Stay pending IPR. No stay was sought or granted in 2:24-cv-00776 before dismissal. It is worth noting that Gilstrap stay orders from the same period — e.g., Netlist v. Samsung (E.D. Tex. 2024-03-11) and Cardware v. Samsung (E.D. Tex. 2023-02-16) — were being used as exhibits by the parties in the parallel Valtrus IPRs, indicating that stay practice was a live issue across the campaign even though it never matured here.

Summary judgment. None. The case terminated before the dispositive-motion window; the heavy summary-judgment work in this campaign (multiple Valtrus MSJs, Vertiv non-infringement and invalidity MSJs, Daubert motions) all occurred in the NTT Data/CyrusOne/Vertiv lead case, 2:24-cv-00361-JRG, in March–April 2026 (CourtListener docket entries 255–291).

3. Claim construction (Markman)

The TierPoint member case never reached claim construction. No P.R. 4-5 briefing, no Markman hearing, and no claim-construction order appears in the '776 docket. The campaign's claim-construction activity was concentrated in the SAP case (opening P.R. 4-5(a) brief filed 2025-01-31; responsive brief 2025-02-14; and, notably, a sua sponte order appointing Michael D. Paul as the Court's technical advisor on 2025-02-14 — see the SAP docket extracts in the IPR2025-00420 petition exhibits). In the TierPoint case, no terms were construed — including the terms that would have driven the '277 infringement theory ("empirical atmospheric map" / "template atmospheric map" / "pattern differentials"), which is why the dismissal leaves that patent's scope judicially untested in this forum.

4. Discovery milestones with strategic significance

• Infringement contentions (2025-02-11). Valtrus served its P.R. 3-1 disclosure, charting TierPoint's data centers as representative of its other sites and pinning the theory on third-party cooling/controls hardware — Vertiv Liebert iCOM/iCOM-S unit-and-supervisory controls, Liebert DSE free-cooling economization, Schneider Electric EcoStruxure IT Advisor Cooling Optimize / StruxureWare, motorized-ball-valve fluid economizers, airside economizers, and Trane RTAC chillers. The charts expressly reserved the right to supplement "including through inspections of Defendant's data centers." These charts came from the IPR petition exhibits (ptacts.uspto.gov), which is the most reliable public window into the '776 discovery record.
• Site inspections. The contentions' stated need to inspect TierPoint data centers frames the site-inspection fight that typically follows; no inspection order is confirmed in the retrieved record.
• Venue/damages discovery. The complaint's venue hook was TierPoint's DFW-area data center (Compl. ¶ 29; the follow-on complaint identifies the specific site as DA2, 820 Allen Commerce Parkway, Allen, TX 75013). Because the patents issued 2004–2006 and the '277 patent's 20-year term ran from a 2002-04-17 filing (application 10/123,403), the patent was expired before suit — the complaint itself pleads in the past tense that TierPoint infringed "before the expiration of the '277 Patent." That made this a past-damages-only case with a six-year § 286 lookback as the economic battleground, and it is consistent with TierPoint pleading a § 286 limitation.
• Third-party/supplier discovery. Valtrus's theory necessarily put supplier indemnity on the table. Vertiv's declaratory-judgment action and its interventions in the Digital Realty and CyrusOne/NTT Data member cases describe Valtrus's "campaign of threats against many additional Vertiv customers," list the customer demand letters Valtrus sent (Cologix, DataBank, EdgeConneX, Flexential, Iron Mountain, NTT, QTS, Stream Data, TRG, and TierPoint), and assert contractual indemnity obligations as the basis for DJ standing (Vertiv briefs, reproduced in PTAB petition exhibits from ptacts.uspto.gov).

5. Trial events, verdict, and post-trial motions

None. The case was closed before the pretrial conference. There was no trial, no verdict, no JMOL, no new-trial motion, no § 285 fee motion, and no appeal. The dismissal order affirmatively provides that "[e]ach party is to bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees," so no cost or fee award exists on this record.

6. Final disposition

Joint dismissal without prejudice. The parties jointly moved to dismiss the member case (Dkt. No. 62), and Judge Gilstrap granted it. The verbatim order (as quoted from PACER by PatSnap) dismisses "all claims and counterclaims that were or could have been brought in the actions between Plaintiffs and TierPoint in Member Case No. 2:24-cv-00776-JRG… WITHOUT PREJUDICE"; denies all other pending relief as moot; directs the Clerk to close the member case "as no parties or claims remain"; and directs the Clerk to maintain as open Lead Case No. 2:24-cv-00777-JRG. The order contains no finding on infringement, validity, or damages, and the without-prejudice character preserves Valtrus's ability to refile against TierPoint on the same patents.

Timing. The joint motion was Dkt. 62 (as recited in the order). PatSnap characterizes the dismissal as coming "after 14 months" from the 2024-09-25 filing, which places the order around November 2025; the exact entry date is not independently verified in this session — treat it as approximate and re-verify at PACER. This is a correction-worthy gap inherited from the prior section, which also flagged it.

Global resolution — follow-on suit 2:25-cv-00323-JRG. On 2025-04-01 Valtrus and KPI filed a second E.D. Tex. (Marshall) action against TierPoint before Judge Gilstrap, asserting a different Valtrus family — U.S. 9,310,855 ('855), 7,939,967 ('967) and 7,057,509 ('509) — again accusing the DA2 data center in Allen, Texas; TierPoint answered with counterclaims (Dkt. 11, 2025-04-28; Rule 7.1 disclosure naming Cequel Data Center II, LLC as its corporate parent), Plaintiffs replied (Dkt. 16, 2025-05-16), and the case was dismissed with prejudice on the parties' joint motion (Dkt. 28). DocketAlarm reports the docket as terminated 2025-11-25. The Dkt. 28 order (quoted by PatSnap from PACER) dismisses all claims and counterclaims with prejudice, each party bearing its own costs, and closes the case "since no live disputes remain."

Contradiction to flag with the prior section: the earlier case overview states that 2:25-cv-00323 "was dismissed with prejudice in 2026 per PACER-derived reporting." The docket-tracker record (DocketAlarm) shows termination on 2025-11-25, and the PatSnap order text describes an eight-month case (filed 2025-04-01). The 2025 date is better supported and also fits the coherent narrative that the November 2025 without-prejudice exit from the '776 cooling case and the with-prejudice exit from the '323 case were components of a single negotiated resolution with TierPoint/Cequel. The prior section's "2026" appears to be an error.

7. Parallel PTAB proceedings on the asserted patents and their effect

No verified IPR/PGR on the '277 patent itself. In this session I could not locate a petition, institution decision, or final written decision directed to U.S. 6,718,277, and I found no Board proceeding that affected (or could have affected) this member case. Given the case was dismissed without prejudice in late 2025, no stay, no IPR-estoppel issue, and no claim-amendment dynamic ever materialized here.

What is verified as to the family and the campaign:

• IPR2025-00667 — U.S. 6,854,287 ('287 patent). A petition exists (petition documents and exhibits at ptacts.uspto.gov, including TierPoint's '776 Answer and the Dkt. 62-related materials), consistent with the '287 patent being one of the most-asserted family members. Institution status, petitioner identity, and outcome are not verified here; the exhibit list references 2025-02 and 2025-04–05 district-court events, so the petition post-dates those.
• IPR2025-00420 — U.S. 6,899,244 ('244 patent) was filed by SAP America, Inc. against Valtrus (not by a TierPoint-related petitioner), with Valtrus's Patent Owner Preliminary Response on file; this proceeding is part of the same campaign's PTAB overlay but does not involve a TierPoint-asserted patent in the '776 case.
• Valtrus's '832 patent is under challenge in IPR2025-01490 (per the prior section), and Unified Patents has pursued reexamination/PATROLL contests across the portfolio.
• Effect on this litigation: none. No stay motion was decided, no Board institution constrained the parties, and the dismissal without prejudice means the Board and the district court never had to coordinate on the '776 patents.

8. Bottom line on the legal posture

The '776 case is a two-year-litigation-that-never-happened: filed 2024-09-25, answered with full DJ counterclaims, charted with third-party-hardware infringement theories by 2025-02-11, and ended by a consent dismissal without prejudice in or about November 2025 with no merits ruling, no claim construction, no stay ruling, no trial, and no fee award. The legally meaningful facts are procedural: (a) the dismissal preserves Valtrus's claims against TierPoint; (b) the lead DataBank case and the broader NTT Data/CyrusOne/Digital Realty/Vertiv track remained live at the time of dismissal; (c) the same-pairs, with-prejudice dismissal in 2:25-cv-00323 on 2025-11-25 supplies the clearest public evidence of a negotiated, defendant-specific resolution covering at least two Valtrus portfolios; and (d) the asserted patents are expired or near-expiry, so this was always a past-damages case.

Sourcing caveats

Verified from primary/authoritative sources in this session: the complaint's notice-letter and venue allegations and claim charts (Compl. ¶¶ 20–21, 29, 32; PTAB petition exhibits at ptacts.uspto.gov); the Dkt. 1 filing entry, AO 120, and Gilstrap assignment (Justia docket, 2:24-cv-00776); the contentions date of 2025-02-11 and the '277 claims 1–11/12–21 assertion (petition exhibit, ptacts.uspto.gov); the verbatim dismissal-order text for both Dkt. 62 ('776, without prejudice) and Dkt. 28 ('323, with prejudice), each quoted from PACER by PatSnap; the 2:25-cv-00323 docket entries 1–16 (Justia) and its 2025-11-25 termination (DocketAlarm); and the Federal Circuit's 2025-04-11 mandamus denial (RPX).

Not independently verified and requiring PACER confirmation before reliance: the exact entry date of the Dkt. 62 order in 2:24-cv-00776; whether Dkt. 62 was accompanied by a license, covenant-not-to-sue, or tolling agreement (the order itself discloses none, and no settlement terms are public); whether TierPoint's Dkt. 17 amended answer was filed on the date I have not confirmed; the party identification for the 2025-02-04 notice of appearance of Daniel J. Schwartz, filed in the '776 case (the retrieved excerpt is truncated at the party name, and the same attorney appears for Vertiv in the consolidated '361 track — do not attribute it without checking PACER); and the institution status, petitioner, and outcome of IPR2025-00667. Some of these come from AI-generated litigation aggregators (PatSnap, ex parte) rather than PACER directly.

I'll research the counsel of record for the plaintiffs in this case.

Let me verify the specific docket sheet and appearances for this case.

Let me check the specific docket entries for appearances in the -776 case.

Plaintiff-Side Counsel of Record — Valtrus Innovations Ltd. et al. v. TierPoint, LLC, No. 2:24-cv-00776-JRG

Sourcing note up front. This case was dismissed without prejudice (joint motion, Dkt. 62; order granted Nov. 25, 2025) and the member-case docket is closed. I could not pull the -776 docket sheet's appearance entries directly from PACER in this session; the roster below is reconstructed from (a) the complaint's ECF filer of record, (b) the PACER-derived counsel table for this case (PatSnap/Eureka, which sources from the E.D. Tex. docket), and (c) the same team's confirmed appearances in the parallel Valtrus data-center suits and the PTAB mandatory notices naming this case as a related matter. Where an attorney is confirmed only in a sibling case rather than in -776 itself, I flag it.

The plaintiff side was a two-firm structure typical of E.D. Tex. NPE practice: a national patent-litigation firm (Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg LLP) running the case substantively, plus a Texas local counsel firm (Findlay Craft, P.C.) satisfying Local Rule CV-10 and handling Marshall/Tyler practice.

Confirmed as counsel for Plaintiffs in this case

Additional Reichman Jorgensen attorneys tied to this portfolio — not confirmed as -776 counsel of record

• Khue V. Hoang (Reg. No. 44,767; RJL&F New York) — designated back-up IPR counsel for Valtrus in IPR2025-00667 on the '287 patent, one of the seven patents asserted against TierPoint. No confirmed -776 district-court appearance found.
• Sean M. McCarthy (RJL&F New York, 650 Fifth Ave.) — appeared for Valtrus at the NTT Data lead-case pretrial; not confirmed in -776.
• Stuart Hene (RJL&F) — appears for Valtrus on the Gilstrap calendar in the consolidated NTT Data/DataBank litigation; not confirmed in -776.

No in-house counsel identified

No in-house attorney for Valtrus Innovations Ltd. or Key Patent Innovations Ltd. appears as counsel of record. Valtrus/KPI are Irish NPE entities with no U.S. legal department disclosed in the record; KPI's corporate parent per its Rule 7.1 disclosure in the companion DataBank case is New PP Licensing LLC, but no counsel from that entity appeared here.

Caveats and contradictions to flag

• Local-counsel identity changed across the campaign and across time. In Valtrus's earlier E.D. Tex. suits (e.g., Valtrus v. Verizon, 2:23-cv-445, filed Sept. 2023), the Texas side was Ward, Smith & Hill, PLLC (Longview — Andrea L. Fair, Claire Abernathy Henry, Garrett Parish), listed as "Of Counsel," not Findlay Craft. By the September 2024 data-center wave, including this TierPoint case, the local firm became Findlay Craft, P.C. Don't conflate the two rosters if you're building a firm-level conflict check for the -776 matter specifically.
• Do not treat the PatSnap plaintiff-counsel table as a per-docket confirmation. It lists six plaintiff attorneys (Morris, Mann, Houghton, Findlay, Berkowitz, Colsher) and two firms, but aggregator tables for this campaign blend appearances across -776, the DataBank lead case (2:24-cv-00777), and TierPoint II (2:25-cv-00323). The pattern of appearances I can verify directly (Equinix 2:25-cv-00016; TierPoint II 2:25-cv-00323) matches this list, which is why I treat it as reliable for the core six.
• PTAB counsel ≠ district-court counsel. The IPR2025-00667 mandatory notices (filed Mar. 17, 2025) designate Colsher as lead and Berkowitz/Hoang/Houghton/Morris as back-up. That filing is strong evidence of who runs the portfolio for Valtrus, and it names V. v. TierPoint as a related matter, but it is not an appearance in the district court docket for -776.
• The -776 docket itself is closed and no counsel filed a withdrawal; the dismissal order (Dkt. 62/63) was joint and signed by counsel for both sides, but the signature blocks on that motion were not recoverable in this session. If you need the definitive appearance list — including the specific pro hac vice admission orders and any appearance withdrawal — that has to come from the ECF docket sheet for 2:24-cv-00776 (E.D. Tex.) directly; I did not have PACER access here.

Bottom line: For Valtrus Innovations Ltd. and Key Patent Innovations Ltd. in this case, the substantive plaintiffs' team was Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg LLP (Berkowitz as lead, with Colsher, Morris, Houghton and Mann), and the Texas local counsel of record was Eric Hugh Findlay of Findlay Craft, P.C. (Tyler) — who filed the complaint.

I'll research the docket and counsel appearances for TierPoint in this case.

I found initial leads. Let me verify against the actual docket and firm sources.

Let me pin down the specific appearances in the 2024 TierPoint case.

Counsel of Record for TierPoint, LLC — 2:24-cv-00776-JRG

Bottom line: The defendant-side team in this (2024) case was an out-of-town lead team from Nixon Peabody LLP (Chicago) paired with The Davis Firm, P.C. (Longview, Texas) as local counsel. That is a different defense team than the one that appeared for TierPoint in the 2025 companion case (2:25-cv-00323), where Husch Blackwell and Scheef & Stone LLP (Marshall) filed the answer — a change worth flagging rather than blurring. Note also the case is now closed (joint dismissal without prejudice; see caveat on the date below), so the appearances described here are those of record during the litigation, not necessarily "current."

Verified appearances

The strongest primary evidence is (a) an Appearance of Counsel form captioned in Valtrus Innovations Ltd. v. TierPoint, LLC, No. 2:24-cv-00776-JRG, signed 02/04/2025 by Daniel J. Schwartz (Nixon Peabody LLP, 70 W. Madison, Suite 5200, Chicago), reproduced in the PTAB record for IPR2025-00667 (ptacts.uspto.gov exhibit); and (b) a TierPoint-side disclosure document served February 11, 2025 (reproduced in the IPR2025-00667 exhibit set) whose signature block reads "Attorneys for Defendant and Counter Claimant TierPoint, LLC" listing the Nixon Peabody and Davis Firm attorneys below (ptacts.uspto.gov exhibit). A third corroborating item is an exhibit chronology entry reading "Notice of Appearance Daniel Schwartz on Behalf of TierPoint, 2:24-cv-00776."

In-house contact (not counsel of record): the complaint (¶ 20) is addressed to TierPoint's Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary, Wendy Knudsen, who received Valtrus's March 22, 2024 notice letter — the only TierPoint in-house legal name appearing in the record (complaint text).

Why the Nixon Peabody–Davis Firm combination matters

Nixon Peabody's Chicago team was simultaneously counsel to Vertiv Corporation in the related E.D. Tex. actions — including the Vertiv v. Valtrus declaratory-judgment suit (2:24-cv-00907) and Vertiv's interventions in Valtrus's customer suits — where the firm's filings state that Vertiv "will indemnify" customers sued over their use of Vertiv products and that at least nine not-yet-sued customers, including TierPoint, LLC, had indemnity agreements, with TierPoint, DataBank, EdgeConneX, Flexential, Iron Mountain and QTS already demanding defense (IPR exhibit, Vertiv's brief). The appearance of Vertiv's own counsel on behalf of TierPoint (from Feb. 4/11, 2025, i.e., several months after TierPoint was first sued and after it had answered) is consistent with TierPoint tendering its defense to Vertiv under that indemnity and Vertiv-installed counsel taking over — this sequencing is my inference, not something the public record states outright.

Caveats and sourcing notes

• Not fully verified: I could not retrieve a complete PACER/docket-sheet attorney list for 2:24-cv-00776 in this session. The verified names rest on reproductions of TierPoint's own 2025 filings (via PTAB-hosted exhibits) and the 02/04/2025 appearance form; the Randal S. Alexander listing rests on a litigation aggregator (PatSnap "Parties and representation," PatSnap case page) that also lists Matthew Werber and Nicole Sims in the wider Nixon Peabody team — both of whom I could verify only as Vertiv counsel in the related case, not as TierPoint counsel of record here.
• Likely aggregator bleed-through: the same PatSnap entry for this 2024 case also lists Michael Charles Smith (Scheef & Stone LLP, Marshall) and Husch Blackwell LLP as TierPoint defendant counsel. I could only verify those for the 2025 companion case, 2:25-cv-00323-JRG, where Michael C. Smith filed TierPoint's answer (Dkt. 11, Apr. 28, 2025) and Husch Blackwell's Rudolph A. Telscher, Jr., Kara R. Fussner and Mark P. Bhuptani entered pro hac vice/vice appearances (Dkts. 13–15, Apr. 30, 2025) (docket extract). Treat Scheef & Stone/Husch Blackwell as the 2025-case defense team, not as the 2024-case team, absent a PACER confirm.
• Dismissal date: the previously generated section flagged the dismissal-order date as unverified. Aggregator reporting now places the joint motion and dismissal at November 25, 2025 (426 days after filing), with the Court expressly keeping Lead Case 2:24-cv-00777-JRG open — but this still comes from PatSnap/exparte rather than PACER directly, and the dismissal order itself does not list trial counsel, so it adds nothing on the counsel question.
• No sealing issue: nothing suggests TierPoint's counsel appears under seal or by pseudonym; the identified attorneys appear on the public face of the filings cited above.